The Best Horror Movies To Watch If You Hate Gore

There's just something about a good horror flick with a compelling monster that gets the adrenaline pumping. But while there are plenty of people who enjoy being frightened in their spare time, it's understandable that other people wouldn't be down, especially considering there are so many horror films out there that rely on an excessive amount of blood and gore to freak viewers out. 

And that leaves some cinephiles in quite the predicament. They may want to add more titles to their personal horror filmography, but they don't know where to start. After all, they don't want to invest 30 minutes into a movie only to turn it off when a waterfall of blood and guts comes on the screen. Fortunately, there are plenty of great horror movies out there that don't rely on too much gore. The following films instead rely on building suspense or only hinting at how bad the monster is to terrify you. For people who faint at the first sign of blood, these horror flicks are for you. 

You know how people will tell you that you shouldn't buy or sell anything on Craigslist because you could meet up with a serial killer? Creep takes that idea and draws it out to its natural conclusion. It's a found-footage film, and that framing device actually works incredibly well for the story being told. Basically, a guy answers a Craigslist ad to film a man's everyday life as a kind of video journey. But he slowly begins to realize how unstable his subject is and looks for a way to get out.

The main reason why Creep is devoid of blood and gore is that the monster is ultimately just some guy. There's nothing supernatural at play. It's just one man who has some pretty significant issues going on. The movie does a superb job of ramping up the tension until the ultimate climax. And if you end up liking this movie, you'll be happy to hear that a sequel, Creep 2, exists, and it's every bit as scary and darkly funny as the first. 

Insidious kicked off the 2010s with a bang when it delivered a hauntingly scary flick for a more mature audience. While a lot of people tend to view horror movies as something for teenagers, Insidious proved to be a thoughtful film that delivered scares in refreshingly terrifying ways. And it managed to do it without relying on a ton of gore.

A set of bloody handprints appear in the film, but there's nothing exceptionally gory if that tends to turn you off from horror films. Instead, the movie delivers some of the best jump scares of all time. The filmmakers also did an excellent job with the monster designs as a host of creepy figures pop up intermittently throughout the plot. Eventually, the movie takes you to an alternate universe where you're not sure if there are monsters hiding in the blackness. The film takes more primordial fears, such as shadows and darkness, and turns them into terrifying weapons that will shock you when you least expect it. Plus, you'll never hear "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" the same way again.

Alfred Hitchcock was a master of building suspense. Nowhere is that more evident than his 1963 masterpiece, The Birds. As you would expect from the title, the film follows a series of inexplicable bird attacks that take place in Bodega Bay, California. No explanation is given for why the birds behave this way, and that's part of the terror. There's no rhyme or reason. It's just pure terror, and even 60 years later, it still manages to freak out modern audiences. 

You see a little bit of blood from when the birds peck at people, but it's nothing excessive. That's not to say there aren't other horrifying images on display. There's one part where you see a man dead with his eyes completely pecked out, and the entire climactic showdown is a major nail-biter. For the most part, any violence is subdued because the camera pulls away before you really see anything. Much of the gore is implied, a similar tactic used for another great Hitchcockian thriller, Psycho. But while that slasher scared people away from showers, this one will keep you looking at the skies.

Before J.A. Bayona directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, he made one of the creepiest films of the 2000s. A practically flawless horror film, The Orphanage is a tense, unsettling haunted house movie about a mother and her son who move into the orphanage she grew up in before being adopted. However, she soon learns that ghosts are real when her son goes missing, and she has to enlist the help of parapsychologists to help her find him.

There are many things this film does well, but the main one is how perfectly it creates a haunting atmosphere. Every frame is so meticulously crafted, and you can see great artistry on display. There's not an overabundance of gore, but you may want to watch out for the car crash scene, which gets a little gruesome. Other than that, you won't find jump scares or loud noises to get a cheap shock out of you. The film focuses more on a general sense of foreboding and grimness while never losing sight of the characters and their arcs.

Most people are probably more familiar with the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man over the original thanks to a particularly noteworthy scene involving Nic Cage and some bees. While the 1973 version has fewer opportunities to make memes, it offers a disturbingly prescient horror story about a police sergeant who goes to an island to search for a missing girl only to stumble upon its cultish inhabitants. 

It's rightfully considered one of the best horror films of all time, and it manages to accomplish that feat with really no blood. Even when violence does come into the picture, most of it is implied. The Wicker Man shows how you can do a lot with so little, by building dread and dropping hints that something horrible is slowly but surely coming. It's intriguing to watch the film today, especially how it's clearly influenced future movies like Midsommar. While there's no gore, there's a ton of nudity and sexual image, so make sure the kids are in bed before you put this film on.

When The Blair Witch Project came out in 1999, it changed what horror cinema would be like for the next decade. The found-footage aspect, along with casting unknowns as the actors, was revolutionary at the time and made the film feel like it could've been real. As for the plot, the film follows a group of filmmakers who head out into the woods to uncover the legend of the Blair Witch. But soon, they find themselves lost in the wilderness, and it seems like something supernatural might be stalking them.

The film manages to extrapolate on your worst fears without really showing much. There's not a ton of gore to speak of, even though the film does have characters describe grisly deaths. What makes the film so scary is that it weaponizes your imagination and makes your mind fill in the gaps of what you don't see on the screen. It's an intriguing experiment in psychological horror, in part because a lot of people thought it was real when it first came out. There probably won't be any other film like this any time soon.